The Pedagogical Imperative for Teacher Educators: A Constructive Reflection

A balanced interrelation between theory and practice is still often missing out in many (language) teacher education programs (Esteve, 2018; Lantolf & Esteve, 2019). Hence the need to critically analyze teacher educators’ professional practice and rethink it. This paper presents a deep reflection upon the difficulties and the possibilities of promoting a balanced interrelation between theory and practice in formative practices and is primarily addressed to (language) teacher educators who are willing to engage in a transformative process. Along this process, teacher educators are to become aware both of the specific core teacher education competencies that are proved to be crucial for ensuring a dialectical relationship between practice and theory and their underlying core concepts, which eventually determine how the corresponding teaching actions related to those competencies are to be performed (Esteve & Alsina, 2024). Together, they make up the pedagogical imperative for (language) teacher educators I advocate for, in order to ensure the most fruitful dialectic relationship possible between theory and practice.